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Klage Harfenspieler III

Introduction

This song, written in July 1795, comes from the beginning of Zelter’s career, and before the poet’s relationship with Goethe. Zelter responds to Wilhelm Meister, hot off the press and published in his native city, with an excitement that is palpable. It was the wife of the book’s publisher, Johann Friedrich Unger, who sent Goethe the composer’s Zwölf Liedern am Klavier zu singen (1796), a collection containing various Wilhelm Meister settings that initiated the friendship between poet and composer. Zelter’s numbering is curious because in the novel this is the second of the harper songs (after Der Sänger) not the third. The marking is Fantasieenmässig and the eight-bar introduction, a wild voluntary for the harper, is an improvisation that shows Zelter’s acquaintance with Bach’s keyboard works. The vocal writing is that of a chorale but one which is allowed to break out of its minim-bound straitjacket the better to express the pain and agony of the harper. The highly romantic and overwrought style, concealed though it may be in baroque conventions, is completely different from that of the more contained Reichardt. The latter’s days as Goethe’s closest musical adviser were definitely numbered by the time Zelter first appeared on the Weimar horizon.

Recordings

'This would have been a massive project for even the biggest international label, but from a small independent … it is a miracle. An ideal Christ ...'Please give me the complete Hyperion Schubert songs set – all 40 discs –and, in the next life, I promise I'll "re-gift" it to Schubert himself … ...» More

'This enterprising, often revelatory set should intrigue and delight anyone interested in the development of the Lied' (Gramophone)'Since making music with friends was Schubert's whole raison d'etre, this 3-CD box is an inspired idea … led by the soprano Susan Gritton, ...» More